On details & the big picture

I started redesigning my house two months ago.

After months of deliberation, I decided it didn't make economic sense for me to relocate to Lagos; not yet, at least.

For starters, I took out everything that I had before—everything! I either gave it out to my brothers or just threw it away. After two weeks, the apartment was exactly like I met it two years ago when I first found the apartment.

I made a Notion list of everything I needed to buy. The list was no MVP—I wanted to go all out, as much as possible. My goal was to design a small crib that wouldn't require me to step outside for a month at least.

On a side too, I want to always turn on my videos in meetings. It doesn't align charging $10K, and then going on to say "I'm sorry there's no light currently"; or to have a repeat of when I had a media interview with a UK agency—light went off midway.

I shifted the blame to Nigeria sha.

Going into the new year, the Brand & Marketing team at Bloc had a retreat to determine our north star and roadmap for the year.

Here's the real kicker: it was going to take lots of planning to hit most of our objectives. It reminded me of my apartment project.

The challenge was not the planning. It was the effort of keeping the big picture in mind as you paint the small strokes every day. It's like Alexander the Great who wanted to conquer the world. It took him minutes to come up with that goal, but 13 years to almost conquer the world.

The same thing goes with storytelling. There's a story you want told — by your brand, and by your audience. Yet a great story is cumulative of many small stories driven by months and years of effort.

When I started with the apartment, I started with the wiring—changed all sockets and switches, and added more lights; then, I repainted the apartment.

I called Taeillo for my furniture; chatted with a local furniture store about my shelves; browsed CDCare for electrical appliances; went to multiple shops to get the perfect rug (I hate my tiles); and still haven't found the right orthopaedic bed.

I remember how crude (and dirty) it was when the engineers were doing the wiring. Every time I told them what I wanted, I'd talk about the big picture — and why I wanted 8 lights in my sitting room. It was my way of telling them that this thing you're doing is important to every other thing coming, and I won't tolerate anything less than what I have told you.

Pretty much the same thing is happening with my team at Bloc.

At the beginning of the year, we defined our role in the company as the team responsible for "making Bloc look good, feel good and be good with extraordinary stories and design".

And while we have spent weeks planning how this would happen, every time we fell off, someone would say "we can't do this, it's not what we agreed on".

I can't tell you how much relief it gives us to have metrics that guide how we build the brand.

Every little stroke should remind you of the big picture. It should get you asking why it is important that it exists.

More importantly, learn to be patient with the big picture WHILE executing ruthlessly on the details. It might take you 13 years to win a war (and conquer over 10 countries), but it could take 3 days or less to win a battle (and conquer a town/city).

Learn to play the long game — but also, ruthlessly, be great at the short terms.

And if you think I have said a lot that you can't remember, remember this: time is cumulative.

Ciao!

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